Uber accuses Levandowski of fraud, refuses to pay $179M Google judgment:
Uber says it shouldn't be on the hook for a massive $179 million judgment owed to Google by Uber's former star engineer, Anthony Levandowski. Uber made that argument in a legal filing last week to a federal bankruptcy court in California. Uber's brief portrays the situation differently than Levandowski, who told the court last month that Uber was legally obligated to pay the award.
Levandowski joined Uber in 2016 after almost a decade at Google, where he had been a leading self-driving engineer. Uber bought Levandowski's months-old self-driving startup Otto for hundreds of millions of dollars, intending to make Levandowski and his team the core of Uber's fledgling self-driving car project.
But things went sour fast. Google sued Uber, alleging that Levandowski had downloaded thousands of confidential documents before his departure and had taken them to his new job. Fearing criminal prosecution for trade secret theft—fears that proved justified—Levandowski invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify during the civil trial between Google and Uber.
Uber fired Levandowski and settled with Google. But Google continued to pursue Levandowski in arbitration, winning a $179 million award. Levandowski argues that Uber has an obligation to pay the judgment on his behalf under an indemnification deal Levandowski negotiated as part of the 2016 acquisition of his company.
But in its latest legal filing, Uber argues that it doesn't owe Levandowski anything because Levandowski used fraud to induce Uber to sign the indemnification agreement.
Previously:
- Ex-Uber Engineer Levandowski Pleads Guilty To Trade Secrets Theft
- Anthony Levandowski Ordered to Pay $179 Million to Google
Related Stories
Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179 million to Google:
Anthony Levandowski, the engineer and autonomous vehicle startup founder who was at the center of a trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, has been ordered to pay $179 million to end a contract dispute over his departure from Google.
Reuters was the first to report the court order.
An arbitration panel ruled in December that Levandowski [...] had engaged in unfair competition and breached [his] contract with Google when [he] left the company to start a rival autonomous vehicle company focused on trucking, called Otto. Uber acquired Otto in 2017. A San Francisco County court confirmed Wednesday the panel's decision.
[...] Levandowski, had disputed the ruling. The San Francisco County Superior Court denied his petition today, granting Google's petition to hold Levandowski to the arbitration agreement under which he was liable.
[...] Levandowski personally filed today for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, stating that the presumptive $179M debt quite exceeds his assets, which he estimates at somewhere between $50M and $100M.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Former Google and Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski leaves federal court in San Jose, California, after a hearing in September 2019.
Anthony Levandowski, former Google engineer and a pioneer of self-driving car tech, agreed to plead guilty Thursday to stealing trade secrets from the internet giant.
Levandowski left Google in 2016 to start his own self-driving truck company, which was quickly acquired by Uber for $680 million. These actions set off a chain of events that led to Google's autonomous vehicle unit, Waymo, suing Uber over alleged theft of self-driving car trade secrets. That lawsuit settled in February 2018 with Uber agreeing to pay Waymo $245 million.
The prosecutors indicted Levandowski in August in a suit that involves 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets from Google. The activities allegedly took place as he prepared to leave the search giant to build out Uber's self-driving car operation.
Levandowski pleaded guilty to one count of trade secret theft in an agreement in which federal prosecutors agree to drop the remaining charges, according to a filing with the US District Court of the Northern District of California. The plea carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.
Statement from the Press Secretary Regarding Executive Grants of Clemency
Anthony Levandowski – President Trump granted a full pardon to Anthony Levandowski. This pardon is strongly supported by James Ramsey, Peter Thiel, Miles Ehrlich, Amy Craig, Michael Ovitz, Palmer Luckey, Ryan Petersen, Ken Goldberg, Mike Jensen, Nate Schimmel, Trae Stephens, Blake Masters, and James Proud, among others. Mr. Levandowski is an American entrepreneur who led Google's efforts to create self-driving technology. Mr. Levandowski pled guilty to a single criminal count arising from civil litigation. Notably, his sentencing judge called him a "brilliant, groundbreaking engineer that our country needs." Mr. Levandowski has paid a significant price for his actions and plans to devote his talents to advance the public good.
Wikipedia entry on pardon within the United States.
See also: Former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski among list of last-minute Trump pardons
Trump's last-minute pardons include Bannon, Lil Wayne and scores of others
Trump Reportedly Abandoned Pardons For Snowden And Assange
Trump declines to pardon Assange, Snowden, or 'Joe Exotic' – here's the 143 people he chose
Previously: Text Messages Between Uber's Travis Kalanick and Anthony Levandowski Released
The Fall of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick
Uber Shutting Down Self-Driving Truck Division
Ex-Uber Engineer Levandowski Pleads Guilty To Trade Secrets Theft
Uber Accuses Levandowski of Fraud, Refuses to Pay $179M Google Judgment
Ex-Googler Levandowski Gets 18 Months in Prison for Trade-Secret Theft
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2020, @07:41PM
The sum's large enough that the government should pick up the tab.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2020, @07:50PM (2 children)
WTF google, make up your mind, are you a sharer or a hoarder?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2020, @08:05PM
I think Peeping Tom is more accurate.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 22 2020, @03:15PM
Both. No contradiction they can detect.
Build Android. Make it open source. Then suck all the money making parts of it from the OS into "Android Services" (later Play Services) app, which is not open source. Tie it all to the Play store which is not open source.
Dear Mr. ${samsung | htc | hauwei | etc}, as a condition of getting the coveted Play Store for your phone, you must jump through these specific hoops would we would never enforce upon an open source OS.
But Android is open source!
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 21 2020, @08:17PM (5 children)
If you try to rip people off who have large armies of lawyers and huge gobs of money, you're not going to succeed.
In Capitalist America, if you want to rip people off, you need to pick on poor people who are unable to go after you, i.e. poor people.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday April 21 2020, @08:51PM (4 children)
Do you work for the IRS?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Tuesday April 21 2020, @10:56PM (1 child)
It's worth noting how much power we gave the IRS. An invasive aggressive organization that can violate whatever privacy is required to make sure you paid taxes. Which is extremely problematic when the IRS operates in reverse in regards to innocence before guilt. With the IRS they can come at you with guns and seize whatever the hell they want, and then with the resources you have left, you need to fight and prove your innocence. If you actually pull that off, the IRS may give you your money back.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday April 21 2020, @11:57PM
Only poor people though. They don't bother trying to prosecute rich people anymore because it costs money. [gq.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday April 22 2020, @12:29AM
I don't, but I'm well aware that rich people have some very creative ways of dodging the tax man, while ordinary folks are stuck paying for most everything the government does.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday April 22 2020, @03:43PM
I wasted my up-mod on the post before yours. Take a +1 touché, in the comments.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Mykl on Tuesday April 21 2020, @09:26PM (4 children)
I'm very surprised that Google didn't nuke Otto from orbit when it first appeared, much less end up purchased by Uber. How the hell do you let your star self-driving engineer leave and start up his own company developing self-driving technology?
Could it be that Google was either:
Either way, it seems weird to me that the thing got up at all in the first place.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by linkdude64 on Tuesday April 21 2020, @11:48PM (1 child)
Engineer-cuck may have been a set up for Uber by Google - it's perfect, if you think about it. What better way would there be to severely impede and tarnish the name of a major competitor? Corporate espionage is already a thing so secrets were going to be stolen anyway, but it may have been done more discretely otherwise. Letting the fool run amok in public was a great way to find out who their biggest (or stupidest) competitor would be by right of whoever won the bidding war (assuming there was one for the company - wiser leaders may not have been involved from the start, seeing what was obviously going on) and then having poison on the inside of the company with which to destroy and discourage them from continuing to compete.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2020, @04:41PM
Like submarine patents, submarine human resources. Well, it worked for nokia with Elop.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday April 22 2020, @04:05AM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by darkfeline on Wednesday April 22 2020, @05:09AM
Because there's nothing wrong with:
1. Person works at a company on X.
2. Person disagrees with company management/priorities/whatever but still loves/believes in X.
3. Person starts their on company on X.
Non-compete agreements are not valid in California.
What is wrong is:
2a. Person steals confidential documents from company before leaving.
I believe there are a decent number of people who leave Google to work on similar things at startups, so probably they had some eyes on it, but not a dedicated investigation.
If I remember correctly, Google only pounced after leaked documents that showed that Uber had suspiciously similar technology that prompted the lawsuit and discovery. Through legal discovery, it was found that Uber indeed had stolen goods.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2020, @09:41PM (2 children)
Delaying the payment forever is the same as not paying at all. Jews know this and so they infiltrated the justice system to make it injustice system that moves at a glacial pace.
It is hard to believe that uber did not read the agreement with the alleged thief. And who is to confirm that uber did not contact the google employee and offered him cash but in the beginning he would start a company which would be found and bought by uber!
Where the googles and facebooks and ubers are involved, remember they are all thieves and frauds.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 22 2020, @01:09AM
One day, you'll have to explain what the difference is between a "Jew" and "a shrewd businessman". The two look very much the same to me. Is it just the name that separates them?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 22 2020, @04:07AM
What "agreement" are you referring to?